Fears? I’m excited that these jobs where people are treated like machines until they quit for sanity’s sake are getting automated.
Exactly! It seems the other people in comments here don’t understand that this is just a net positive for workers!
You already have universal basic income where you guys are living ? Failing that it’s solely less low qualification jobs and more concentration of revenues for the few above. I don’t see that as « a net positive » -although semantically, those laid off would not be workers anymore so in that you’re right. Horrifically so.
UBI is necessary for this to be positive, so that’s our problem. Not the machines taking the job.
Don’t throw shit at this, throw it at politicians.
What a short-sighted view. Some people sacrifice themselves to be treated like machine because that’s the only option for them to. earn a living. You take the job away from them, they’ll end up on the street. I fear for them.
We need to find a better ways for them not to be treated badly, not ways where they’ll end up badly.
How did we get to a place where awful jobs are the only ones available for people to take? How does holding back the use of technology to keep these awful jobs around help those who are worn out and tossed aside in the long run?
There’s a difference between being idealistic and quixotic. With the introduction of machanization, the problem is not unemployment due to not enough jobs but there won’t be any job at all. The real question is how to accommodate these people when there won’t any job for them? The seemingly scary solution is this current real capitalist world is to leave them on the street. Unless you can provide the better solution to this real world problem, I suggest to keep your utopian world in your dream.
Just head up: the future is scary for the next generation inline. Even the white collar job won’t be spared.
Any company that doesn’t automate will eventually get priced out. People are just too expensive compared to robots. We’re smack dab in the midst of a technological revolution and just like the industrial revolution the job-scape is about to change rapidly and radically.
Automation is not the point of argument. That going to happens no matter what. In fact I touch about it in my other comment.
The point to ponder is how to address the impact of automation. As far as I know even without full automation, the US (and many other capitalism based) don’t have a good record to address the difficulty faced by low skilled workers, e.g. depicted by Nomadland. To simply give utopian solution won’t address the issue and would be premature.
Unless we are talking about Scandinavian countries (socialism system), that’s a whole different issue.
They’ve tried in the past and they always perform like shit. I know management salivates at the thought of robots replacing people, but the technology just isn’t there yet. Robots just don’t seem to have very good problem solving skills and can’t deal with the wide range of seemingly inconsequential hiccups that occur throughout the work day that most people solve without much efgort. They do a few simple things well, but then break down at the slightest deviation from that. Maybe one day they’ll marry robots and AI together and they’ll be able to do complicated tasks, but for now they’re just not there yet.
People hear the word “robot” and assume that there’s some level of intelligence involved. Often, that isn’t the case. A robot is usually just a sophisticated machine following a painfully specific set of instructions.
If something unusual happens that an engineer hadn’t written a thousand lines of code to deal with, it could shut down the entire line.
I’m dealing with these specific issues right now in a distribution center, and it’s just with shelf moving robots that Amazon has had for 10-15 years already. It’s amazing how dumb they are and how poorly they are programmed to handle exceptions, and they aren’t even doing puts and picks.
Eventually someone will figure out how to make robots that can handle the more complicated tasks that humans currently do. I figured we were still a decade or 2 away from that point, but if anyone can figure it out quicker, it’s Amazon. I kind of hate the possibility that they might have already figured it out, but I’m very skeptical of a simple announcement.
The orange kiva bots? Amazon stole/purchased a robotics company for those as they wanted to develop them inhouse. A lot of the issues with robotics is cost and imperfect environments. Even dumb shit like changing the warehouse lighting can screw up sensors, guidance systems, and other automation if it wasn’t designed that way. Customers want automation, but they don’t want to pay for it. If we have to cheap out on sensors, cameras, drives, and other parts, it makes for less reliable systems depending on the application.
There is nothing more demoralizing than knowing a design is going to fail from the beginning because sales let the customer dictate the parts and design elements to cut costs. Then we get yelled at when it doesn’t work perfectly or make rate. Or worse, it does/did work but the customer now uses the system in a way it wasn’t designed and sabotage any good we might have done for them. Best is when a customer doesn’t maintain a system, something that has to start on day 0, and then throws a tantrum when it breaks down all the time.
Robotics and automation isn’t perfect. I have seen some great systems run with little to no downtime and shitty systems that operators have to constantly babysit. Us engineers try our best, but we have to use the tools we are given. I will say that technology overall has boomed over the last decade, but the parts and shipping situation since the pandemic started still hasn’t been solved.
Weren’t these jobs like, feared already cause they treat you less like a machine, they treated you like shit to the point youd have a good chance that you have to step over a dead body eventually?
Their turnover rate is ridiculously high and supply chains as an industry have been steadily moving towards automation. Robots are going to keep replacing unloaders, loaders, and pickers just as AI is going to start replacing buyers and dispatchers in the near future.
I worked for FedEx and it seems to me that Amazon didn’t start this practice which is why it’s confusing to me why they get the spotlight, it’s just industry standard it seems (Amazon, FedEx, and UPS)
The place I work at had a 400% turnover rate for the 90 day period. Luckily I’ve seen other places and it doesn’t seem like its a company wide thing, but a location to location issue. They pay higher than minimum wage as a standard, but that still didn’t entice me or others to continue working there because of how much labor vs pay it is. Plus the stress of angry managers doesn’t help it at all.
That’s an important point. A lot of these places can’t find or keep people even when they pay rather well. A few years ago an old neighbor of mine got a job at (I’m pretty sure) UPS and it paid well but the work just wasn’t worth it and he quit and took a pay cut to have significantly less stressful job. To be fair he had a pretty bad back that caused him a lot of pain.
I honestly don’t know what to think. Yes, people need jobs, but more importantly, they need GOOD jobs. Amazon treats people terribly and, even at their best, does the bare minimum to comply with the law and keep their warehouses staffed.
Employees are being taken advantage of. Getting people out of there might be a net positive.
We need protections for those workers (i.e. UBI, et al) BEFORE they lose their jobs to capitalist dreams, preferably funded by the capitalists.
I 100% agree with this, and that’s why I can’t see robots taking job as bad news.
The problem is with the society. We need to build it better, so these advantages are for us - not for some scummy rich guy.
On another note: nobody should be a billionaire.
Yes, unfortunately currently society exists to serve billionaires, and we don’t see that changing much. More automation will just entrench that power further.
We need to eliminate billionaires yesterday, or risk ending up in techno neo-feudalism.
Capitalism is reaching its end road. Things will change, for better or for worse. How it will change will depend on whether politics will support the people, or the rich… and of we continue on without changing much, it will support the rich.
As it stands right now, we need those workers to be out of jobs and on the streets for protections to be considered. Otherwise “they have jobs,” unemployment is low and the machine is “working as expected.” Therefore nothing needs to be done.
we need those workers to be out of jobs and on the streets
I’m guessing you’ll be the first to volunteer then? For the greater good and all.
If Amazon doesn’t need employees then they don’t need tax breaks. In fact add a new tax for any business that switches to robot labor. They can pay the missing personal wages in taxes. Texas makes electric car drivers pay more for not using gas, this seems like the same thing.
Charge everyone that uses computers then, instead of using secretaries to do everything.
Stupid idea because it incentives inefficiencies. Taxes need to be made up elsewhere like in vat or income tax.
Computers didnt reduce jobs, they created many more.
Amazon (along with others) absolutely destroyed jobs, killed competition and violated antitrust laws. All because they were wealthy and could buy their way out. Then they treated their employees with contempt (piss-bottles) and made them work in unsafe work environments (Illinois tornado). They deserve to be broken up like all monopoly-like businesses.
How did the printing press make more jobs?
It didn’t at least not immediately.
This is just being a luddite all over again. Higher output and less work for a society is a dream we should all be striving for. Keeping people in shitty jobs because they don’t have another job to go to when we could replace their work is barbaric.
